The Beijing 2008 Olympics that begin Aug. 8 will go on for a mere 17 days, but the job of preparing the IT systems for the Games started no less than five years ago.
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Technology planning for the first-ever Games in China began as early as 2001, according to Bob Hayward, a former ICT advisor to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG).
Hayward, currently director of risk advisory services at KPMG, became acquainted with officials from the embryonic BOCOG IT group during a conference that year in Adelaide, Australia. He also helped facilitate a meeting between the visiting group and members of the IT team for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
"That session went extraordinarily well," said Hayward in an e-mail interview. "As a follow-up, BOCOG IT invited me and Dr. Ian Reinecke--the CIO of the Sydney Olympics--to visit them in Beijing for a week of workshops. Ian and I did that in 2002, some six years before the actual Beijing games."
RFID
The five million tickets will contain RFID (radio frequency identification) chips to prevent counterfeit ticketing. Identification tags for some 200,000 accredited individuals participating in the games will also be RFID-enabled to verify card-holder identity.
Remote access to CIS
The Commentator Information System will be made available to broadcasters in their country of operation, instead of at the Olympic venues. The commentators can access real-time results and data feeds, as if they were onsite.
Wireless access
Journalists will for the first time be able to navigate the Olympics INFO2008 system from their own laptop via a wireless network.
The discussions, said Hayward, revolved around the transition of elements such as systems design and applications, the management of system integrators and vendors, as well as actual experiences in Sydney and the resulting changes in core Olympic systems. At that time, the organizers were also already concerned with how IT could play a role in reducing the environmental impact of the Games, he noted.
There were also "lots of conversations" about the technologies that were emerging at that time that could become established by 2008, said Hayward. One topic that came up was wireless broadband.
"[The] BOCOG was keen to use the latest technology [to showcase] China's sophistication, so we tried our best to figure out what would likely be well established in five years' time--a very difficult task," Hayward explained. To underscore his point, he pointed out that the team did not anticipate the rise of Web 2.0 and social networking tools.
The road beyond Athens
A new milestone for the Beijing IT team was reached in 2003 with the formulation of the preliminary IT masterplan, according to systems integrator Atos Origin.
Atos is the appointed integrator to manage all other technology partners, and is responsible for designing, building and operating the IT infrastructure. The IT services vendor developed the two key applications--Games Management Systems (GMS) and Information Diffusion Systems (IDS).
In 2004, the tech team received a further boost from the involvement of Jeremy Hore, chief integrator for Beijing 2008, and a small core group of Chinese engineers, in the Athens Olympics. Atos also established a team onsite in Beijing from October that year.
| A peek at two tech partners in Beijing 2008 | ||
| Sponsor | Lenovo | Samsung |
| Role | Olympic Worldwide Partner for hardware | Olympic Worldwide Partner supplying wireless communications equipment |
| Equipment |  24,000 desktops including flat-panel and touch-screen displays 2,000 desktop printers 800 laptops 700 serversAnother 5,000 pieces of equipment will be used in Internet lounges for participants and marketing purposes. | Responsible for the Wireless Olympic Works (WOW) communications platform, and: 15,000 TD-SCDMA phones including the SGH-i688 for VIPs. |
By 2005, the IT Masterplan and integration testing strategy had been defined. Atos also delivered its first GMS module, which supported BOCOG in managing the accommodation for athletes and officials. By end-2006, Atos personnel had accumulated more experience in the Torino Winter Olympics, opened the integration lab and made its first software delivery for the IDS.
Preparations accelerated in 2007. Most of the software development was in the "production" phase by that time, and the primary data center was also set up. In August, the Good Luck Beijing phase--a year-long testing of IT infrastructure supporting the Games-- commenced.
The Olympic lead-up
Over the last several months, the technology partners worked with BOCOG on two technical rehearsals, to ensure that processes are in place to manage any technical difficulties and provide seamless delivery of varied services to different groups of Olympic users.
At a media briefing in March in Beijing, Hore said that the "amount and granularity of testing has been much more than we ever did in the past". And, the Technology Operations Center or main command facility for the Games, is around 30 percent bigger than the last Games. To BOCOG's credit, however, not a single milestone has been missed, he added.
As the world trains its eyes on the athletes vying for international glory over the next two weeks or so, technology will be a silent warrior to realize BOCOG's vision of a "High-tech Olympics".
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